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This beautifully painted polychrome vessel was
designed and executed by a Mayan artist, a
member of the Empire which sprawled across
Central America in the first millennium AD.
Despite being intensely vulnerable to natural
disasters, this notoriously changeable area
produced one of the foremost civilisations of the
New World, with technological and cultural
advances that far outstripped their neighbours.
The Classic period (c.250 – 800 AD), to which
this piece belongs, was based on intensive
agriculture, specialist production and trade (in
obsidian, pelts and jade) between neighbouring
city-states and across the American continents.
The Maya erected the tallest buildings that would
be seen in the Americas till the 19th century AD.
This timeframe saw a flowering of artistic and
scientific endeavour, including the development
of a glyph-based literary system that has allowed
academics to precisely date historical events, as
the Mayans also developed the only reliable
calendrical system in the New World. The stories
of creation, beliefs and social information we
have for the Maya allows us to reconstruct many
of their rituals and practices, combined with
archaeological information about the economy
and the people themselves – for instance, they
were much given to the habit of deforming the
skulls of their children using strapping and wood
boards, in order to produce an elongated shape.
They were also enthusiastic about blood-letting,
which they used as a gesture of obedience to
new rulers, sometimes letting so much blood
from their tongues and genitalia (using ropes
strung with stingray spines) that entire cities
became anaemic. Their artworks were highly
influenced by Teotihuacan and the Aztecs, in
contrast to the Pre-Classical period who owed
more of their stylistic heritage to the Olmecs.
Classical Period works are renowned for their
restraint, yet also for their virtuoso paintwork
and sense of style.
This vessel is painted in ochre as a ground,
topped with brown (and banded with black) and
the base section in black. The centre painting
beautifully portrays a nobleman sitting in state,
in mid gesticulation. His skull has been flattened
in the aforementioned manner, and is
surmounted by a headdress made from the tails
of quetzals and various geometrical elements. He
is comparatively corpulent, denoting high status,
and is elaborately dressed in a tunic that is tied
in the back with a large bow. He also wears
jewellery on his wrists and in his ears, and stares
forward from heavy-lidded eyes, presumably at
his courtly retinue. Mayan potters were distinct
from the painters, who occupied an exalted
status in social circles due to their power in
rendering the likenesses of important people of
the time. In the current case, the vessel would
have been made for an aristocratic household in
lowland Guatemala, probably to be used as a
drinking cup. The paint remains in good
condition; the quality of this refined depiction of
court life is a credit to the artist who created it
one and a half thousand years ago.
- (AM.144 (LSO))
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